NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

PrBoom is a version of the 3D shoot’em’up Doom, originally by id
software. It includes, amongst other things, the ability to play with
several players connected by a tcp/ip network. prboom-game-server is
the ‘server’, that is the program that passes data between the
different players in the game.
To start a network game (often abbreviated to ‘netgame’), first the
server is started. prboom-game-server accepts various parameters to
control the type of game (the skill level, number of players, level to
play, optional WAD file(s) to load, etc).
Then each player that wishes to participate runs prboom-nethostname,
where hostname is the name of the machine on which the server is
running. Each copy of prboom retrieves information about the game from
the server, and when the specified number of players have joined, the
game begins.

Options

-Nplayers
Specifies the number of players in the game (default 2). The
server will wait for this many players to join before starting
the game.
-eepis
The episode to play (default 1). Unless you are playing Doom 1
or Ultimate Doom, and wish to play one of the later episodes,
you do not need to change this.
-llevel
The level to play (default 1).
-sskill
Specify the skill level to play (1-5).
-d Set game mode to (old) deathmatch (default is cooperative). See
the original Doom docs for information about the different
network game modes.
-a Set game mode to ‘altdeath’ (v2 deathmatch) (default is
cooperative). See the original Doom docs for information about
the different network game modes.
-f Select fast mode (monsters move faster).
-n Selects nomonsters mode, i.e. there are no monsters in the game.
-r Respawn mode. If you don’t know what this is, you don’t want to
;-).
-cconffilename
Specifies a configuration file to read which sets parameters for
the game. This is in the same format as the PrBoom configuration
file (in fact, you can ask it to read your normal PrBoom
configuration file if you want). Only certain settings are
acknowledged: default_skill, default_compatibility_level, the
compatibility options and some of the game settings (use -v to
have the server print the options as it recognises them).
-wwadname[,dl_url]
Specifies a WAD file to play. This is added to the internal list
that the server keeps. When a client connects, the server sends
the list of WADs; PrBoom will then add this to the list of WADs
specified on its command line. Optionally, an url to the file
can be given too; if when PrBoom connects it cannot find the
named WAD, it will attempt to retrieve the file from the given
url, extracting it if necessary. See prboom(1) for information
about the supported url types and compression formats.
-tticdup
Reserved.
-xxtics
This causes extra information to be sent with each network
packet; this will help on networks with high packet loss, but
will use more bandwidth.
-pport
Tells prboom-game-server what port number to communicate via
(default 5030). Note that if you change this from the default,
then all the clients will also need to specify this number when
they try to connect (the default programmed into prboom is also
5030).
-v Increases verbosity level; causes more diagnostics to be
printed, the more times -v is specified.